Featuring Aaron’s sermon from Sunday, and a reflection from Steve Garnaas-Holmes shared out by Anne. Also links to several of our content clearinghouses for all your SJC content needs!
Featuring Rob’s sermon from Sunday, a guest selection from the Seacoast Queer Choir, a request for support for our Garden project, and links to all our content!
Featuring Rob’s sermon from Sunday, another beautiful new Saint-Saëns recording from Joseph Harris and Richard Benefield, a request for support for our Garden project, and links to our content!
Featuring Anne’s sermon from Sunday, a new Saint-Saëns recording from Joseph Harris and Richard Benefield, and a prayer for the human family.
So, there is that beautiful, dramatic version of love, like the first time you hear Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” and then there’s the other: when our human-ness creates a path of destruction from anger, frustration, pettiness, misunderstanding, ego…whatever…and the only thing left on that “cold and broken” landscape is love. I am so blessed to have the gift of God’s love because, without it, there’s no way I could practice that love with others.
Feeding starving children 7,500 miles away from Portsmouth is not easy. The good news is that the WFP has been doing this in Afghanistan for the last 60 years. When many international agencies had to leave the country last Summer the WFP stayed and is continuing to deliver food - bags of beans and rice to children and their mothers. We carefully checked the WFP program and can report their strong reputation for delivering food where the need is greatest.
So, what is the bottom line with love? To begin consider Sunday mornings, 8:00, Rite 1 with Anne and Rob: (The second great commandment is like unto it) THOU SHALL LOVE THY NEIGHBOR AS THYSELF. Day by day, bit by bit, love is all around us. We don’t always recognize it but it’s there. Sometimes it takes a Mayfield, Kentucky to remind us of love.
Last night’s service of Lessons and Carols was a continual experience of being blown away by the outcome of the hard work, high spirits, and sense of joy put into the atmosphere by so many amazing humans. I am so grateful for the gift of being present to the service last night, for so many reasons. There are two moments in particular that really cracked my shell…
With open minds and hearts and due reverence for the fact that we are discussing the culture of the Wendat First Nation tribe of Eastern Canada, and with an awareness of the fact that we will be delving deeply into what is likely new material for many of us from a text and cultural standpoint, Jennifer and I present you with an abridged primer on The Huron (Wendat) Carol.
To sum it up, I will tell you that the whole experience of that service was NOT peaceful for me… save for that brief moment when my role in the service guaranteed me the opportunity to pause my busy-ness, sit, and just play the piano for everyone. No notes to read, no pages to turn, no memory recall…
